Probing the optical chiral response of single nanoparticles with optical tweezers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method using optical tweezers to selectively trap and distinguish chiral nanoparticles based on their handedness, enabling enantioselective sorting and characterization of individual particles.

Contribution

The study presents a novel optical tweezing technique for enantioselective trapping and rotation of chiral nanoparticles, facilitating their sorting and chiral parameter measurement.

Findings

Circularly-polarized laser beams can trap particles of specific chirality.

Displacing the trapped particle induces rotation dependent on chirality.

The method enables enantioselective sorting and characterization of chiral microspheres.

Abstract

We propose an enantioselective scheme to sort homogeneous chiral particles using optical tweezers. For a certain range of material parameters, we show that a highly focused circularly-polarized laser beam traps particles of a specific chirality selected by the handedness of the trapping beam. Furthermore, by applying a transverse Stokes drag force that displaces the trapped particle off-axis, we allow for the rotation of the particle center-of-mass around the trapping beam axis. The rotation angle is highly dependent on the handedness of the trapped particle and is easily measurable with standard video-microscopy techniques, allowing for an alternative mechanism for chiral resolution. Our platform not only allows for enantioselection of particles dispersed in solution but also paves the way to the characterization of the chiral parameter of individual, homogeneous chiral microspheres using optical tweezing.